The availability of the customer and tech support that a web hosting company provides will tell you a lot for the services they provide as well. If you're allowed to use just email messages and tickets, you have almost certainly discovered some reseller and not the web hosting provider. If this is the case, you'll probably have to wait for a couple of days in order to get an issue resolved since your reseller may not be checking their communication regularly or they may have to get hold of the real web hosting company for extra assistance. If the supplier offers several means of communication with fast response time available anytime, they are almost certainly the top provider, not a reseller. Therefore you will reap the benefits of timely assistance and quality support since they will have immediate access to the servers where your account is. No matter what the issue - sales or technical, it's always much better to have the option to get in touch with your web hosting company directly using your favourite method of communication.